NASCAR Nationwide Series driver Elliott Sadler was asked Saturday at Chicagoland Speedway about whether he and Regan Smith had spoken about their on-track incident last weekend at New Hampshire.
This was Sadler's complete response:
"You can ask us all you want, and we understand you have a job to do also. Yes, Regan (Smith) did reach out to me this week and we had a 20 or 30 minute conversation and also Dale Jr. (Earnhardt) reached out to me this week because he's the owner of the car and he and I have been friends since we were teenagers, and had some good conversation.
"I'm still pissed about it and Regan knows that and he knows where I stand. He took 100 percent of the blame and understood why I'm upset and why I was upset. The biggest problem I had with it is I gave him a huge break at Iowa -- a huge break -- he hit the wall off Turn 4 and went into Turn 1 and I could have easily made it three-wide, that was the same day as the Pocono race, so none of us, a lot of us that use spotters, so I knew he didn't have his (regular) spotter at Iowa and I gave him a huge break and could have easily -- he could have easily wrecked.
"I felt like he didn't give me the same courtesy and I actually gave him a big break at the beginning of the race at New Hampshire -- I caught him from a straightaway behind, raced him for 15 laps and got in the back of him in the middle of (Turns) 3 and 4 and I just slowed down and stopped and let him get back in front of me and then tried to race him clean again. For him to do what he did at New Hampshire -- I'm still ticked about it. But, we talked and we agreed that our racing is going to change a little bit between us, but we know that we're going to be racing around each other a lot between now and Homestead and they feel like they have a chance to win the championship. We feel like we have a chance amongst other drivers, so we're probably going to see each other a lot between now and November."
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